The Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world's largest multilateral environmental fund, held a series of meetings in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, between May 31, 2026 and June 5, 2026, and made decisions that will influence global efforts to tackle biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution for the rest of this decade.
The GEF Council, which governs different funds, met in three successive sessions during the week . The 71st Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council wrapped up GEF-8, the most ambitious funding cycle in the GEF's 35-year history, and launched GEF-9 with a pledge of $3.9 billion.
The 40th Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund (LDCF / SCCF) Council, which oversees the world's only climate funds dedicated entirely to the poorest and most vulnerable countries, approved new projects and a strategy for 2026-2030.
The 6th Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) Council approved new biodiversity projects. The GBFF is the world's newest biodiversity fund and has been operating for only three years.
Together, these bodies approved $232.5 million for 24 projects in 22 countries. The projects are expected to attract more than $1.1 billion in total investment.
"The GEF-9 replenishment process has shown what becomes possible when we choose cooperation and collaboration, when we come together to act not just for our own countries, but for our shared planet," said Interim GEF CEO Claude Gascon.
The host country itself added a symbolic note. Aziz Abdukhakimov, Advisor to the President of Uzbekistan, announced that his country intends to become one of the first in Central Asia to contribute to GEF-9 — a shift from recipient to donor. "Countries should not only benefit from international cooperation but also contribute to it," he said.
At the same time, the 8th GEF Assembly was also held. This is the GEF's biggest political meeting and takes place only once every four years. It brings together ministers and policymakers from all 186 member countries.
Of all the environmental issues these funds support, biodiversity receives the largest share of funding.
Under GEF-8, biodiversity received $1.92 billion, or 36 per cent of the record $5.33 billion budget.
Since its creation in 1991, the GEF has invested more than $5.2 billion in biodiversity projects. It says these investments have helped protect or improve the management of more than 2.5 billion hectares of land and sea, an area larger than the whole of Latin America.
Even in the final Samarkand work programme worth $144.3 million, biodiversity received the largest share, with $60.3 million allocated to it.
The funding will support projects such as protecting oceans through the Blue Nature Alliance, conserving migration routes used by billions of birds travelling between East Asia and Australia, helping farmers in Botswana live alongside elephants and lions as wildlife habitats shrink, and making India's forests and grasslands more resilient to increasingly severe wildfires linked to climate change.
The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, which also received support in this round, has been working since 2000 to channel GEF funding directly to local civil society organisations in some of the world's most threatened biodiversity hotspots, including the Western Ghats in India and the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa.
The GBFF approved two projects in Samarkand that show how biodiversity finance is being used on the ground.
In India, a $12.4 million project, supported by $30.3 million in co-financing, will help prepare biodiversity plans at the state level and improve the management of 200,000 hectares of land outside protected areas. The project is expected to benefit at least 30,000 people. This is important because India is one of the world's most biodiverse countries and is home to more than 70 per cent of all recorded species groups found on Earth.
In Papua New Guinea, a $6.4 million project with $16.7 million in co-financing will support Indigenous communities to protect and manage 700,000 hectares of highland forests. These forests are home to birds of paradise, tree kangaroos and thousands of plant species found nowhere else in the world.
There are also examples of newer financial tools being tested. These tools go beyond simply giving grants and try to attract private money into conservation at scale. Conservation finance has worked in one direction — governments and international funds give grants to developing countries to protect nature with no financial return expected. The model is necessary but limited. It entirely depends on donor generosity and government budgets. The newer tools being tested in GEF-8 try to change that by making conservation financially attractive to private investors.
In Madagascar, South Africa and Indonesia, GEF-8 introduced conservation bonds. These are financial instruments in which private investors receive returns only if biodiversity outcomes improve.
In South Africa, investors are paid only if black rhino populations increase. In Madagascar, payments depend on the survival of lemur populations. In Indonesia, returns depend on the health of coral reefs in the Coral Triangle.
This is very different from traditional conservation funding because it rewards actual results rather than simply funding conservation activities.
The private sector is also becoming more involved. The Rob Walton Foundation pledged up to $50 million to support the protection of 162 important protected ecosystems across Africa. However, the money will go only to countries that use part of their own GEF funding for these same areas. This is an example of private funding being used to strengthen public funding rather than replace it.
These funds are extremely important. But there is one number that explains the scale of the challenge. Experts estimate that the world faces a biodiversity finance gap of around $700 billion every year.
By comparison, the entire family of GEF funds spends only around $1.5-2 billion annually on all environmental issues combined. That is roughly 0.2 per cent of the amount scientists say is needed to reverse biodiversity loss globally.
This funding gap is not a new problem. Global biodversity finance stood at around $52 billion a year in 2010, when experts estimated the world needed between $150 billion and $440 billion annually to meet those targets. Money was simply never there.
By the time governments agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, the estimated annual financing gap had grown to between $722 billion and $967 billion. Running alongside this, around $1.8 trillion is spent every year on subsidies that harm the environment, including support for fossil fuels and industrial agriculture.
The people attending the meetings in Samarkand are well aware of this history. So why might this time be different? The answer lies in the way biodiversity finance is changing.
The GBFF, launched in Vancouver in August 2023, was created because biodiversity conservation now requires approaches that are faster and more focused on local communities.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities manage about 80 per cent of the world's remaining biodiversity. Yet they receive less than 1 per cent of international biodiversity finance. The GBFF was specifically designed to address this imbalance.
So far, 31.9 per cent of all GBFF funding has gone directly to community-led conservation efforts, well above its target of 20 per cent.
The Papua New Guinea project approved in Samarkand is an example of this approach. Instead of outside organisations managing forests, local communities that have lived in and depended on these forests for generations are receiving support to protect them themselves.
Another important change is coming under GEF-9. For 35 years, biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution were largely treated as separate problems, with separate funding streams. GEF-9 changes that approach. From July 2026 onwards, all new projects will be expected to address biodiversity, climate and pollution together because they are closely connected.
For example, protecting a forest helps conserve wildlife, stores carbon and reduces pollution in rivers. Protecting coral reefs supports biodiversity, protects fisheries, reduces coastal damage and helps ecosystems cope with warming oceans. Treating these challenges as one connected crisis could change both the types of projects that receive funding and the way success is measured.
Still, the most honest conclusion from Samarkand is that neither the $232.5 million approved this week nor the $3.9 billion pledged for GEF-9 will be enough to close the annual $700 billion biodiversity finance gap.
What these funds can do is test new approaches, strengthen institutions, help countries build conservation systems and attract much larger investments from governments, development banks and private investors.
The GEF says that for every dollar it invests, another $6.40 is mobilised from other sources. That leverage may be the most important measure of its success.
The real question over the next four years when the world needs to meet the KMGBF targets is whether that multiplier effect along with newer tools such as conservation bonds, community-led finance and blended public-private investment can grow quickly enough to match the scale of the global biodiversity crisis.